Category: Society

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Why politics is important…

Politics can make a difference. And it all starts with ideas. Some ideas are more universal and meaningful than others.

My children are the center of my world—and when I think about the issues facing our nation right now, I think about what that means for our girls, and the world that we’re leaving for them and all of our children. There is so much at stake—this is about more than just politics—it’s about whether or not we as a people can move forward through times of challenge, and cynicism, and frustration. And use the opportunity we’ve been given to build better communities and to build a better country.

Excerpt from: Organizing for America | Erica Sagrans’s Blog: Michelle Obama: “This isn’t about politics”

We’ve accomplished a lot, but the job is clearly not done. ?So when voting tomorrow, think about the opportunity we have to make a lasting difference, not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren.

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We have good reasons to be angry

These are scary times, there is no doubt. but I hope in the end people focus on what we can accomplish, not just what we fear. Bill Clinton recently put it well…

Clinton exhorted the crowd to “keep on being mad. But concentrate your anger so that it clarifies your judgment instead of clouding it. . . . The worst thing you can do right now is bring back the shovel brigade to start digging the hole again.”

Excerpt from: Former president Clinton on mission to rescue Democratic Party in fall elections

 

I happen to agree with President Clinton about the disaster that is modern Republican policy. But wherever you stand on the various issues, let’s make this election about solutions, not just anger and frustration.

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Yes on 19… (California)

I’m backing California Proposition 19, even though I’m personally disinterested in marijuana. Paul Buchheit makes the argument beautifully, so I thought I would share.

Not only is prohibition an attack on our basic right to control our own bodies and minds (a philosophical point which most people probably don’t care about), but prohibition also provides a multi-billion dollar subsidy to violent criminal organizations that threaten our physical safety and security, something everyone cares about.

?http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/10/quest-for-freedom-and-safety-why-i.html

Go read the whole thing. Even if you don’t live in California.

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That one teacher

I was lucky – I had several. Not all of them were perfect, but each was perfect for me. They made a difference for lots of kids, and for me, they made all the difference.

I was never an easy kid to teach. I was called precocious, which I think was a nice way of saying “pain in the ass.” School was boring and sitting still was impossible. I never got impressive grades, but would test well. If a subject captivated me, I would devour everything I could find about it, but this happened far too infrequently for most teachers.

Except for the few. Each of them found a way to keep me engaged, to expose the fascinating detail of a subject, or bring meaning and relevance to it. Science became a study of the way things work, rather than just facts and formulae. History showed stories of struggle and redemption, rather than just dates and names. Math became shape and motion, rather than anonymous patterns to manipulate with set procedures.

Teachers are not interchangeable parts of a machine. But then again, neither are kids.

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Mint CEO Patzer: “I personally don’t think Mint … should even be covering this particular topic” – Fortune Tech

I grumbled a bit to myself when I saw the Mint infographic on the “Economic Impact of Immigration”, but didn’t bother to take it any further. I’m happy to read that Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, saw the problem and has taken steps to correct it. Fortune Tech reprinted his email in their coverage:

I’ve been traveling and found out about the “Economic Impact of Immigration” article this morning.  As soon as I read it, I had it pulled.  While my editor ensures the article was fact checked, I personally question two sources of such facts.  More, even if the facts or statistics to check out, they were presented in a biased, editorialized, and non-objective way.

I personally don’t think Mint, who’s dedicated to personal finance, should even be covering this particular topic.  If that were in our domain, and one were covering “illegal immigration”, I should hope that we’d cover both sides of the topic.  In no instance should the ethnicity or nationality matter in such a discussion.  That’s simply wrong.

The post is down, I’ve put my editor on warning, and issued the following apology:

At MintLife, our mission is to give users and visitors the financial information they need to save and do more with their money. Topics range from personal finance advice, to analysis of macroeconomic trends and the fiscal impacts of news of the day. We publish content from a variety of contributors and sources, and the opinions expressed don’t necessarily reflect those of Mint.com or of Intuit. It’s true that the tone is often provocative, seeking to engage readers in dialogue around important topics, but the recent blog post “The Economic Impact of Immigration” went too far, cited polarized sources and did not receive the editorial judgment and oversight it deserved.  We regret it.  Our intention was not to further the agenda of any of the sources from which data was pulled, and the post has been removed.

 

Excerpt from: Mint CEO Patzer: “I personally don’t think Mint … should even be covering this particular topic” – Fortune Tech

 

I hope someone covers the misleading data in more detail. If anyone sees something comprehensive, I’d love it if you’d let me know.

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Great products start with meaning

 

Great quote from Jeff Bezos on the connection between great products and meaning:

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

Excerpt from: Jeff Bezos’s mission: Compelling small publishers to think big – Fortune Tech

 

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Bringing you the news

Importance of “filters” has been over-stated. As my friend John Pederson puts it:

Managing your own filter is critical. The other kind of filter that lets things in vs. preventing things from coming in.

[From Dean Shareski on attention.]

A filter is a screen that keeps things out. My information problem isn’t solved by keeping things out. What I need is to bring the right things to me, and that’s different.

What I want is not a filter, but good editors that bring me the news that I need to see. These editors could be a staff of professionals, but there’s also a role for technology in bringing my news to me.

There are already several services that try to do this, but none of them is really as easy, ubiquitous, and natural as I would like them to be. WIll someone solve it?

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Jobs calls for organ donors…

The Wall Street Journal has video of Steve Jobs’ opening remarks at the Apple event last week. It was his first official public appearance since going on medical leave several months ago, during which he had a liver transplant.

It’s good to see such an open and human appeal from a prominent figure. I applaud Steve for this and wish him the best for his continuing recovery.

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The Public Flow

I’ve been wandering recently, in my thoughts, around and through something I’m calling “The Public Flow.”

It started as a vague concept, triggered by conversations about “The Flow” – the moving stream of information that’s always there, described by Stowe Boyd, Kevin Marks and others. Doc Searls calls it “The Live Web.” But some of that flow is obscured, private, shared among friends and our web contacts or inside walled garden systems. I think what’s most interesting is the portion of The Flow that’s happening out in public – The Public Flow.

People have always spoken in public about their lives and what’s happening around them. Most of it has always happened outside formal community forums such as the Town Council.  These conversations happen in the pub, in the bleachers of our kids soccer games, and just about everwhere. We’re all having public conversations all the time, where the only privacy is that of proximity – you really don’t know who that is sitting at the next table, and usually you really don’t care. Now many of those conversations have moved to Twitter, or Facebook, or someday on Google Wave. Some of those are open conversations that are easily found, searched, and aggregated and some aren’t.

My friend Laura Fitton, aka Pistachio spoke about Twitter at Google back in April. In discussing the organic flow of information on Twitter, she made this point:

When you go out and do focus group research and explicit market research, people freeze up a little bit and don’t quite get the right natural answer about how they really feel about a product, how they really experience a problem that a product might solve, how they really interact with information. But when someone bothers to tweet about it, that’s a very natural, authentic thing, so the quality of data and the volume of data flowing through it are potentially extremely valuable, and I think we’re just beginning to see good search tools…

What will happen as we develop better tools for understanding and participating in this Public Flow? How will life change? How will business change? How will our communities change?

How will it change us?